foreign land. It is in fact an aspirin, but since they both believe it’s ecstasy, it has the effect of relieving themselves of responsibility for their own actions. Who, drug-crazed, can help what they do?
They tear off each other’s clothes. Mara’s best and most seductive apricot chiffon nightie is under the pillow. Letty puts it on. Henry makes no objection. It is the one Mara wears, he has come to believe, when she means to refuse him. Too tired, too cross, just not interested. He pushes the delicate fabric up over Letty’s thighs with even more satisfaction. He doesn’t care if he tears it.
‘Shouldn’t you be wearing a condom?’ she asks.
‘I don’t like them,’ he says.
‘Neither do I,’ she says.
For ten minutes Letty is supremely happy. The dark, rich places of the flesh unfold and surround her with forgetfulness. She is queen of all places and people. She can have as many men as she wants, just snap her fingers and there they are. She has infinite power. She feels wholly beautiful, consummately desired, part of the breathing, fecund universe, at one with the Masai girl, the Manhattan bride, every flower that ever stooped to mix its pollen, every bird that sings its joy to heaven. And every one of Henry’s plunges is a delightful dagger in Mara’s heart, his every powerful thrust a reproach to pallid, cautious David.
Then Letty finds herself shifting out of a blissful present into a perplexing future. She’s worrying about the sheets. This is condom-less sex. What about stains? Will Mara notice? She could launder them – there’s a splendid washer-dryer in the utility room, but supposing it broke down mid-wash? Henry could possibly argue that he spilt wine on the sheets – as indeed he has, and honey too, now she comes to think of it. She is very sticky. Can Mara’s chiffon nightie be put in the machine or must it be hand washed?
‘Is something the matter?’ he asks.
‘No,’ she says.
But she no longer feels safe. Supposing Mara gets a call from her family on the way to Cheshire and turns back? Supposing she and Henry are discovered? Why is she doing this? Is she mad?
Her body shudders in spite of herself. She rather resents it. An orgasm crept up on her when she was trying to concentrate on important things. She decides sex is just mechanical. She’d rather have David, anyway. His penis is less effective and smaller than Henry’s, but it’s familiar and feels right. David must never find out about this. Perhaps she doesn’t want a baby as much as thought she did. In any case she can’t have a baby that isn’t David’s. What if she got pregnant now? She’d have to have an abortion, and it’s against her principles, and it would have to be secret because fathers can now claim rights to unborn embryos.
Henry rolls off her. Letty makes languid disappointment noises but she’s rather relieved. He is heavier than David.
Henry’s phone goes. He answers it. Mara is stuck behind an accident on the M6 north of Manchester,
‘Yes,’ says Henry, ‘I walked Letty home.’
Now Letty’s cross because Henry has denied her. Secrecy seems sordid. And she hates liars. And Mara? What about Mara? Mara is her friend. They’re studied together, wept together, bought clothes together and supported each other through bad times, good times. Mara and her Porsche and her new wardrobe have all seemed a bit much, true, but she sees why Mara puts Henry down from time to time. He’s not only irritating but untrustworthy. How could you trust your life to such a man? She ought to warn Mara about that, but how can she? Poor Mara, stuck behind an ambulance in the early hours in the far north while her partner betrays her with her best friend…
Henry is licking honey off his fingertips suggestively. ‘Shall we do that again?’ he asks. ‘Light of my life.’
‘No,’ says Letty and rolls out of bed. Her bare sticky feet touch the carpet and she is saved.
Moral
Few of us can resist temptation the first
time round, and we should not blame ourselves too much if we fail. It’s the second time that counts. Let sin pass lightly on and over. Persist in it and it wears your soul away.
Letty’s sense of guilt evaporates, washed away in the knowledge of her own virtue and fondness for her friend. Guilt is to the soul as pain is to the body. It is there to keep us away from danger, from extinction.
And good Lord, think what might have happened had Letty stayed for a second round! As it was she got into her own bed just minutes before David came through the door. His father had rung from Cardiff and the jewellery had been found and the burglary hadn’t happened after all. Letty hadn’t had a bath, thinking she’d leave that until the morning, but David didn’t seem to notice. Indeed, he fell on her with unusual ardour and the condom broke and he didn’t even seem to mind.
If she’d stayed in Mara’s bed David would have come round to find Letty and at worst killed Henry – fat chance! – and at best told Mara, or if not that then he’d have been able to blackmail Letty for the rest of her life. ‘Do this or I’ll tell Mara’ – and she’d have had to do it, whatever it was: go whoring, get a further degree (not that there wasn’t some attraction in surrendering autonomy…)
But as it was it all worked out okay. Letty had her 10 minutes of sublime pleasure, felt anxious, felt guilty, and was rewarded by having her cake and eating it too. I don’t know what happened to the sheets. I daresay Henry calmed down enough to put them through the washer-dryer and get them on the bed again before Mara got back. I hope he had the sense to rinse out her nightie in the basin at hand temperature, not hot.
I do know that in the following week Henry sold the Fiesta and got a Jaguar which could outrun the Porsche any day, and he used the joint account to do it. He felt better about himself.
I allow Letty, having observed the moon, to sleep illicitly with Henry once, but not twice. It is a balancing act and she got it right.
It is doing what you should, if only in the end, and not what you want which makes others respect and like you, and to be respected and liked by others is a very good way to be happy.
Save your moral strength for what is important.
The
